Posts Tagged ‘anti-semitism in france’

(JTA) — Two years after the murder of four Jews in Toulouse, the president of the French city’s Jewish community encouraged young Jews to leave France.

Ari Bensemhoun said young Jews should move away because they cannot practice Judaism openly and without fear in Toulouse.

“I won’t deny that, yes, I encourage the younger people to make aliyah [immigrate to Israel] or go elsewhere, where they can thrive in open Judaism, emancipated and without constantly fearing over what tomorrow will bring,” Bensemhoun said in an interview Monday with the i24 television news channel.

On March 19, 2012, a French-born Islamist, Mohammed Merah, killed Miriam Monsonego, 8, along with Rabbi Jonathan Sandler and his two sons, Arieh and Gabriel, at the Ohr Hatorah Jewish day school.

The killings are believed to have contributed to a marked increase in the number of French Jews who immigrated in 2013 to Israel – from fewer than 2,000 in 2012 to more than 3,000 last year.

According to the SPCJ security unit of the French Jewish community, the murders triggered a wave of anti-Semitic incidents. Ninety such incidents were recorded in the 10 days that followed the shootings.

In a statement Wednesday, European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor commended French authorities for their efforts to curb anti-Semitism and urged officials to “preempt the next murders by continuing to invest in education, law enforcement against those who preach hate and incitement, and to combat the extremists.”

A French court cleared comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala of charges connected to a video in which he called for the release of a man who brutally murdered a Jew.

The Correctional Court of Paris acquitted Dieudonne on Friday in connection with a video what was recorded in April 2010, in which Dieudonne called for the release of Youssouf Fofana, who is serving life for the 2006 torture and murder Ilan Halimi. Fofana and more than a dozen accomplice criminal gang had abducted Halimi for ransom.

In the video, Dieudonne said Fofana’s incarceration “shows the power of the Jewish lobby,” according to a report Friday by Le Parisien daily.

But Dieudonne was let off the hook because the prosecution and police failed to demonstrate that Dieudonne was behind the dissemination of the video — a requirement in prosecutions for incitement of racial hate.

In the video, Dieudonne also said that “Ilan Halimi was lucky” compared to Said Bourarach, a security guard of Moroccan descent who was found dead near Paris after having drowned in a water canal. No one was convicted for Bourarach’s death but one of the theories investigated was that he was drowned by a gang of Jews with whom he got into a fight.

Dieudonne has seven convictions for incitement and owes roughly $100,000 in fines which he refused to pay, claiming bankruptcy.

A French advertiser scaled back a campaign for the dating site JDate after its billboards were vandalized.

Thierry Courrault, a regional director for the JC Decaux billboard giant, said his company decided to pull 18 billboards out of 100 advertising JDate.

The reason was “vandalism against out property (swastika graffiti and broken windowpanes),” he told the French Jewish news site Le Monde Juif.info. “In this very particular current context, it was to avoid the proliferation of such acts,” he added.

The decision he added, “was commercial and does not represent any position on the issue.”

Many of the withdrawn posters advertising JDate were posted in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre.

On Jan. 19, Jewish worshippers found the remains of a freshly slaughtered wild boar on the doorstep of the Saint-Brice-sous-Foret synagogue north of Paris. The following day, swastikas were discovered on the facade of the Chabad synagogue inBoulogne- Billancourt, a western suburb of the French capital.

Organizers said the French government deserved praise for its efforts to prevent the antisemitic comedian Dieudonne M’bala M’bala from taking his show, “The Wall,” on a nationwide tour.

France’s highest court banned Dieudonne’s debut in the western city of Nantes on Jan. 9. The comedian has been convicted several times of inciting racial hatred of Jews through trivialization of the Holocaust.

“Freedom of expression is an important principle but Holocaust denial is not an opinion,” CCOJB President Maurice Sosnowski said through a megaphone at the demonstration. “It’s an offense. One must fight the impunity” of those who spread such ideas.

A number of Jewish figures have criticized the ban on Dieudonne as an infringement on basic freedoms.

Jack Lang, a Jewish former French minister of culture who heads the Arab World Institute, has told French media that he opposes the court’s ban because he found it too limiting. Lang, a former professor of law, called the ruling “a major regression” that “regrettably mixes the administrative branch with the judiciary.”

On Jan. 11, Dieudonne announced he would abandon the show in favor of a new show, “Asu Zoa,” which would be devoid of antisemitic content.

But AFP, the French news agency whose reporter saw a sneak preview of the cancelled show, reported the shows were almost identical except for “very extreme examples of anti-Semitism.”

On Thursday, the Le Monde daily reported that Dieudonne — who is already under investigation for suspected tax fraud — may be thrown out of the theater he is renting in Paris, Main d’Or, because he has no license to operate it.

Supporters of the anti-Semitic comedian Dieudonne hijacked three French pro-Israel websites in a coordinated cyber attack.

The attack Thursday paralyzed the websites Israel-Flash.com, Europe-Israel.org and liguedefensejuive.com, the website of the French Jewish Defense League, and replaced their content with messages of support for Dieudonne, Le Nouvel Observateur reported.

On the hijacked websites, the hackers called the attack a “triple quenelle” — a reference to a gesture invented by Dieudonne, which French Interior Minister Manuel Valls last week termed “an inverted Nazi salute, an anti-Semitic gesture of hate.” The gesture involves placing one’s outstretched left palm on one’s right shoulder while pointing downward with one’s right arm.

Dieudonne has been convicted seven times for inciting hatred of Jews. On Thursday, a French court banned him from performing in Nantes in what was to be the debut of his new show, “The Wall.”

On the website of the far-right JDL, the hackers posted a caricature of the league’s logo, featuring the silhouette of a ballet dancer framed by the Star of David of the original logo.

“Dear Zionist enemies, some of you (all?) interpret the quenelle to a be secretly anti-Semitic. This is a mistake,” the text posted on the JDL’s website read. “I realize you don’t like Dieudonne but unfortunately, you don’t understand the material. This can be fixed.”

The hackers also posted videos claiming the quenelle is an anti-establishment expression.

On Monday, Le Monde reported that French police are looking to question a man who posted a photo of himself performing the quenelle in front of a synagogue in Bordeaux, one of dozens of such photos that have surfaced in French media in recent weeks.

Valls sent the non-binding recommendation in a circular to French municipalities on Monday, days before Dieudonne is scheduled to launch a nationwide tour, the French news agency AFP reported.

“I have sent an instruction today to all mayors,” Valls said at a news conference near Paris. “It recalls that mayors and municipalities may prohibit a show if it risks creating a disturbance to public order.”

The text stipulates that the the mayors may ban shows that have served as crime scenes, if they are seen to abuse freedom of artistic expression or if they are “prone to undermine human dignity.”

Dieudonne has been convicted seven times for inciting racial hatred against Jews and is facing an eighth trial for suggesting during a show that the French Jewish journalist Patrick Cohen belonged in a gas chamber. He also is the originator of the quenelle, the increasingly popular gesture in France that has been called anti-Semitic and a quasi-Nazi salute.

“The mayors have the judicial means to act and I am sure they will,” Valls told reporters.

Patrick Rimbert, the mayor of Nantes in western France, has not banned the debut performance of Dieudonne’s tour, which is scheduled for Thursday. He did, however, tell the news site ouest-france.fr that he did not want Dieudonne to perform in his city.

Several prominent campaigners against antisemitism, including the Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld, have called on the municipality to ban the show and, failing that, for protesters to rally in front of the Zenith Theater where Dieudonne is scheduled to perform.

French comedian Diedonne M’bala M’bala complained to police about threats to blow up the theater in which he performs.

The bomb threat was made Thursday against the Main D’Or theater, which Dieudonne operates, in Paris’ 11th arrondissement, according to MetroNews.fr. Police rushed to the scene but found no explosives.

Performances by Dieudonne, a professed anti-Semite and inventor of the quenelle anti-Semitic salute, have been targeted in the past by activists of the Ligue de Defense Juive, the local branch of the JDL.

Last week, six men believed to be linked to JDL were arrested in Lyon for allegedly assaulting two individuals who posted online pictures of themselves performing the quenelle, a quasi-Nazi salute which French Interior Minister Manuel Valls said Tuesday was a gesture of hate and anti-Semitism.

In recent months, several athletes in France and beyond were seen performing the quenelle, which is believed to be gaining traction in French society.

On Dec. 28, West Bromwich Albion striker Nicolas Anelka performed the salute during a match, prompting strongly worded condemnations from anti-racism campaigners.

But Kick it Out, a prominent British organization working to curb soccer racism, issued a guarded statement saying only that it will assist Britain’s Football Association in investigating Anelka’s behavior. Anelka has ignored calls to apologize, saying the salute was a gesture to his friend Dieudonne.

John Mann, chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism at the European Parliament, blasted Kick it Out for not using stronger language.

“Not good enough,” Mann wrote on Twitter last week. “You should be leading on challenging this racism. Your statement is weak and puny.”